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Traitor.  I'll sleep better when he's been arrested and tried for treason for his little side trip to Paris in '71.

Unfortunately, I'll probably just have to settle for outliving him.

The epilogue to Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi is archived here:

EPILOGUE: ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS

http://www.learnedhand.com/kerryunfitepilogue.htm

discharge that Carter personally had upgraded. Was it originally an OTH (Other Than Honerable) or perhaps a General discharge.  I'm sure someone out there knows.

I agree with mbecker908, the dirtbag deserves to be tried for treason.

You know, those records he promised to make public.  And finally gave a "copy" to a friendly reporter.

Maybe somebody could be encouraged to "leak" a full and complete copy to a more objective reporter.

Oh yeah, I forgot, they only leak when it benefits the left.

Why would anyone remain loyal to a dimwit like Kerry? It must be the $$ from the Mrs.

War criminal:  By his OWN words, is his status - the very charge he made against all Vietnam Vets.

Lots of vets on this site.  Many, many savvy other participants and contributors.  Here's a question:

Anyone here on RedState have professional military or medical knowledge of a person being severely wounded by a .50 cal machine gun and not only remaining ambulatory but also fleeing afoot?  According to Kerry, the very thing happened to him in the thick of battle.

 In fact, according to Kerry, an enemy soldier hard-hit by a .50 cal machine gun on Kerry's boat fled in such a threatening manner that Kerry had to leave his post (Swift Boat), leap ashore, run the guy down and shoot him in the back?  This by his own adsmission.

.50 caliber gunshot wounds generally do not lend themselves to swift flight - or any flight at all.  Sounds like Kerry either ran up against Batman in the jungle - or, more likely, he murdered a severely wounded man uncapable of defending himself.

Sounds like a war crime to me; or a war story; or both - all neatly wrapped in a thin veneer of both physical and moral cowardice.

But then, I am the first to admit that I can not be objective about the former Mrs. Heinz's pet poodle.

first they state that, "His supporters are compiling a dossier that they say will expose every one of the Swift boat group's charges as a lie and put to rest any question about Mr. Kerry's valor in combat."  OK, during the campaign it was too fast paced and they were caught off guard to correct it in time to change peoples opininons.  Fair enough.

But wait!!!  Then they say, "Some of Mr. Kerry's friends and former Swift boat crew members made advertisements during the race to try to shoot down the group's charges."   Wait a minute here.  I thought she just said that they finally were going to set the record straight.  But it appears they tried in the middle of the campaign.  I'm confused.

And one more time just to confuse me more, "They approached Mr. Kerry after the election with the idea of setting the record straight."  Pathetic.

And for one last laugh Kerry said this, "He had posted some military documents on his campaign's Web site and had allowed reporters to view his medical records but resisted open access to them as unnecessarily intrusive."   Pres Bush released how many hair follicles were on his head and Kerry wouldn't release his military records to the public ever.  John Kerry is unfit for command.

Read the propoganda piece for yourself.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/washington/28kerry.html?ei=5065&en=c5
547ed7bc74510b&ex=1149393600&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

NOTE:  there is some dispute about whether the targets here are Taliban in Afghanistan or just varmints.  In any case, the video is appropriate to your question about what kind of shape you would be in immediately after being shot with a 50.  Kerry's story, as I understand it, indicates the man in question was "wounded" by a 50 at close range and he finshed him off with an M16.

GRAPHIC 50 cal video is here.  

Ballistics on a current 50 cal round fired from an M107 50 cal rifle:

• Bullet weight: 660 grains.
• Muzzle velocity:  2,800 ft per second.
• Muzzle energy:  11,500 ft pounds.

My best friend is a competition 50 shooter.  At 1,500 meters a 50 cal round will penetrate a one inch steel plate like jello.  At close range, given a muzzle energy of 11,500 ftlb, that's a little like getting run down by a fast moving train.

No.  He's unfit to walk free.  He's unfit to sleep in a bed anywhere but Leavenworth Prison.  

He is just unfit...

a dossier that they say will expose every one of the Swift boat group's charges as a lie

That's what makes this exercise so pathetic. Only the most fragrant wheatberry-eaters are going to believe that such a thing is even possible. It's not like the SwiftVets didn't document their charges. They did... in excruciating detail. The idea that anyone, anywhere, is going to expose every one of those charges as a 'lie' is preposterous.

If they get lucky, the best they're going to do is find some apparently equally-credible witnesses who will sign affidavits contradicting the sworn affidavits the SwiftVets have. Now we'll have dueling affidavits, and still no way to tell who's lying.

When this happens in court, we empanel a jury and they decide. This case was decided... in 2004.

To keep picking at this is like Kenneth Lay writing a book from prison explaining why he didn't really do it. Nobody cares.

that every night Al Gore and John Kerry go to bed thinking about losing to George Bush. I hope it they die with that as their last thought.

So . . . you see what I mean.

a single close range hit from a 50 cal round is VERY low.  Combined with the, I think, fact that Swift Boats were equipped with mounted quad 50's, at close range a man sized target would likely sustain more than one hit.  

to defend Kerry if this has ANY legs at all.

are for hurting the country or Republicans. Preferably both.

The money I sent to the SBV in 2004 was the best political donation I ever made.

For me, it is a tossup between that and John Thune's campaign.

I finished reading this article (there's a link on Drudge) before I switched to redstate.com to see what people think about it. My question is, where did Kerry get the idea that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth spent $30 million going after him? Is it possible they could have raised so much?

  It was a searing memory of being in Cambodia Christmas Day.  Wait, no it might have been in Febuary, perhaps March, St Valentines Day, maybe St Patricks Day in March?

     This was the brainchild of genius Bob Shrum who was much better at morphing a picture of Newt Gingrich into a KKK rally, which the media had no problem with.

       Take away the smut and lies and what are you left with John and Bob?

...I hope he visits them in their deathbed hospital room to wish them well, acknowledge them

as worthy, close-run adversaries, and pray for their souls.

That last should stick in their craws as they draw their last breaths.

--furious

He brought up the magic hat again. I had forgotten about that.

Staffer: John, ... A NYTimes reporter is on the line and wants to know more about the Hat. There must be more to the story er I mean the factual incident.

JohnK: Sure put him through.

NYTimes: John can you remember more about the Hat?

JohnK: Of course! Its seared into my memory. Seared.

Here is the conversation as I remember it.

>>

Colonel Lucas: Your mission is to proceed up the Nung River in a Navy patrol boat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it and learn what you can along the way. When you find the Colonel, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate the Colonel's command.

JohnK: Terminate the Colonel?

General Corman: He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.

Civilian: Terminate with extreme prejudice. Here is your lucky hat. Keep it always.

Colonel Lucas: You understand Captain that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist.

<<

Maybe it's important to him. Perhaps it is balm for his wounded ego. But he'll have to pardon the rest of us if we don't care anymore.

If you don't care why start a diary to talk about it?  

We learn now that Kerry's temperament is such that he cannot let this go.

A minor quibble:  Kerry did, indeed fall off his horse when presented with an unforseen circumstance by SBVT, but we should also realize that that "horse" itself was a stage prop. from the beginning.  And once the director yelled "cut!" and he had a chance to dust himself off a little, he called the propmasters and got himself another horse to ride.  

Once you tap Hollywood heavyweights like James Moll, Steven Spielberg and Morgan Freeman to create the storyline and "documentary" theatrical backdrop for your "Reporting for Duty" spiel, you can't just let it go that easily -- lest it be shown to be  nothing but a tall tale, after all.  Once you take the step of engaging Hollywood to write your story, and then use it as the centerpiece of your campaign for President, you can't give up on the story, at least if you intend to make sure it ultimately triumphs as the "competing narrative" of the truth.

Link here...  Some of the interesting facts about 527 spending:

• Spent by Democratic leaning organizations:  $264.5MM
• Spent by Republican leaning organizations:  $154.5MM
• Spent by George Soros (Dem) personally:  $27.0MM
• Spent by Peter Lewis (Dem) personally:  $24.0MM
• Spent by SwiftVets:  $17.0MM

The most interesting thing to me is that the Democrats raise 527 money through unions and thru large personal donations.  The SwiftVets raised money $20 at a time with few large donors.

One quibble - while the Swift Boaters' specific criticisms of Kerry's service record may have been unanticipated, the fact that a substantial number of his fellow Vietnam veterans, including John O'Neill, had been holding a grudge against Kerry for 35 years was very much a known risk, known to Kerry as much as to anyone.  His failure to prepare for them to come out swinging - especially when Kerry made Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign - shows his complete failure to plan for even inevitable contingencies.

You know the answer to that. You're just being a twit.

The other unanticipated event was that the SBVT escaped into the public's conciousness despite a near-total media blackout. I think Kerry and his advisors were confident that the media could keep the SwiftVets' message bottled up.

However, some combination of Fox News, talk radio, and the Internet did something that Democrats had never seen before: the pre-election "message" careened out of their control. Their friends in New York could no longer 'shape' what Joe and Mary Sixpack heard about the candidates.

That was a big deal. Elections in the United States will never be the same. The Democratic loyalists in the media no longer control what the public sees and hears. To political consultants, such a thing would have seemed impossible. So they got blindsided.

ricochet and hit an Iraqi in the ankle it then traveled up his leg and exited out of the top of his head, every bone it hit shattered so color me skeptical if the traitor skerry claims some poor schmuck was hit by a .50 was still ambulatory.

...was a sitting Senator, and therefore unspeakably evil... :P (reference: All of Last Week)

I made those identical contributions, plus a few more in '04.  I stll get mailings from John Thune's Heartlands Value PAC.  But I still think the Swifties were the best.  To all these other guys its business.  To them, it was personal.

I still find it fascinating that Republican Veterans backed a draft dodger who used his name and family influence to avoid combat in Vietnam, while stabbing a real combat Veteran in the back.

It just goes to show how corrosive modern Republicanism has become...there really are no values for this crowd; no honor.

Regardless, the F-102 was still far more dangerous to fly than today's combat aircraft. Compared to the F-102's lifetime accident rate of 13.69, today's planes generally average around 4 mishaps per 100,000 hours. For example, compare the F-16 at 4.14, the F-15 at 2.47, the F-117 at 4.07, the S-3 at 2.6, and the F-18 at 4.9.

Even the Marine Corps' AV-8B, regarded as the most dangerous aircraft in US service today, has a lifetime accident rate of only 11.44 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours.

The F-102 claimed the lives of many pilots, including a number stationed at Ellington during Bush's tenure. Of the 875 F-102A production models that entered service, 259 were lost in accidents that killed 70 Air Force and ANG pilots.

oh, well. Stupid is as stupid does.

"I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command....

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

--Lt. John Kerry, Testimony Before The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 22, 1971

------------------

Kerry refuses to admit that he burst onto the national scene by telling a shameful falsehood about American servicemen. In his testimony, he even traded on the notion that the vets had been made into war-damaged freaks -- the country has created "a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence." Kerry is perfectly happy to stand with members of this monstrous body of war criminals, victims and misfits now that they suit his political purposes. As for those vets who don't, they are "liars." The Swift Boat veterans seem unfazed by the charge, since they, after all, have been called worse by John Kerry.

    Kerry is taking an enormous risk in basing his Swift Boat defense on a lie -- that the Swift Boat veterans are an arm of the Bush campaign. This is a civil war between Vietnam vets, one group of which is not going to forget what Kerry said about them 35 years ago. In 1971, Kerry said, "We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service [in Vietnam]." He owes the country an explanation of why, sometime between then and his need for footage for a campaign biography film, he changed his mind.

(From: Kerry vs. Swift Boat Vets, part II, Aug 23, 2004, by Rich Lowry)

"John Kerry, reporting for duty!"

Kerry is the one that decided to make his Vietnam service a centerpiece of his campaign, making the Swifties' questions fair game.

His attitude and behaviors once returned are a lot more relevant to his fitness to serve than was his four month tour of duty.

Apologize to all those Vets who couldn't get a decent job after returning home because he portrayed them as homicidal manics.

I know of some who even with college degrees couldn't get work after the fact that they had served in Vietnam was known.

A very good point. He'd had his innings with the Swifties before. Why wasn't he ready to counter their complaints, particularly as he'd decided to use his service record as part of his campaign?

Makes you wonder what sort of president he would have been...the word that comes to mind is unprepared.

Humility has never been a part of John Kerry's character.  Nor has honor.  Nor has a sense of duty.  

There is nothing John Kerry can say short of pleading "guilty" to treason for his 1971 side trip to Paris that will make any difference.  And that's a guilty plea with no deal, he spends the next 20 to life in Leavenworth.

Then, and only then, can we discuss forgiveness.

That would be my only question for Sen. "Golddigger" Kerry, if I ever ran into him on Nantucket, of course.

I got no beef with Kerry and his medals.  The country threw a war, he showed up, he deserves respect for that.  How he got his medals, not my business.  Other combat vets, his brother Swifties who were there and saw the blood and sacrifice, have the right to argue over this, not me.

My outrage was his lying about the combat records of all the other American military in Viet Nam.  How any American could have voted for him after that unapologetic lie about his fellow Americans should shame them.